Fifa president Gianni Infantino pulled into corruption scandal by Panama Papers

Leaked documents raise questions over role played by new Fifa president in TV rights deal while he worked for Uefa

Posted Wednesday, April 06, 2016 by theguardian.com

Cross Trading is a subsidiary of a company called Full Play, which is owned by Hugo Jinkis. Last year in an unrelated matter, Jinkis was alleged by US prosecutors to have handed over millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks to football executives to obtain and retain media and marketing rights.

Jinkis, along with his son Mariano, is under house arrest in Argentina.

Jinkis’s involvement in the deals with Uefa from a decade ago are set out in the Panama Papers. Cross Trading signed a deal with Uefa’s broadcasting and marketing partner, called Team. Infantino’s name appears on the contract as Uefa’s director of legal services.

According to the contracts, Cross Trading, which was registered in the tiny South Pacific tax haven of Niue, agreed to pay $111,000 for the exclusive rights to broadcast Champions League football in Ecuador between 2006-07 and 2008-09.

In the covering letter containing the fully executed contracts, Uefa states: “Congratulations on joining the family of broadcast partners for the 2006-2009 Uefa Champions League seasons … we look forward to working with you!”

Ecuadorian broadcaster Teleamazonas then paid Cross Trading $311,170 for the Champions League rights.

Uefa insisted the TV rights deals with Cross Trading were all above board and it could not have known when they were signed in 2003 and 2006 that Jinkis would be involved in the scandal a decade later.

It said the rights were sold “pursuant to an open, competitive, tender process”, and that the offer from Teleamazonas/Cross Trading was 20% higher than the next best bid.

''There is no suggestion whatsoever of any Uefa official or marketing partner taking any form of bribe or kickback, whether in relation to this tiny deal, or any other commercial transaction,” it said.

Uefa added: “The TV contract in question was signed by Gianni Infantino since he was one of several Uefa directors empowered to sign contracts at the time. As you will have observed, the contract was also co-signed by another Uefa director. It’s standard practice.”

It is unclear why Teleamazonas paid so much for the rights, but one possibility is that Cross Trading simply made a huge profit on the deal. Local sources also confirmed that a similar agreement was in place three years earlier, when Teleamazonas bought a similar package from Cross Trading for a fee believed to be about $400,000.

Uefa reiterated that it received $111,000 for the Champions League rights over a three-year period and had no knowledge of any subsequent deal between Cross Trading and Teleamazonas. “The reason why Cross Trading appears as the contract partner in this deal is simply because Team was advised that Cross Trading had the mandate to act as exclusive buyer for all sports TV rights of Teleamazonas in the European area,” it said.

''Neither Team nor Uefa had any reason to believe that there was anything suspicious or untoward about an agency relationship between Cross Trading and Teleamazonas.”

It said any bilateral deals between Teleamazanoas and Cross Trading were “their business, not ours”. “We do know that Teleamazonas made the best offer for these FTA [free-to-air] rights in Ecuador. And that’s why we took it.”

Uefa did not say why it had previously asserted that it had not had any dealings with any of the indicted companies or individuals.

But having checked through thousands of contracts, it said it could confirm that in addition to two contracts with Cross Trading for the Champions League and Uefa Cup in Ecuador from 2003 to 2006 and 2006 to 2009, it had also signed a Euro 2016 hospitality sales agreement with Traffic Sports Europe, a Brazilian company named extensively in the US indictment.

Fifa said that the matter was largely one for Uefa and that its assertion that “to the best of his knowledge Gianni Infantino had no dealings in his time at Uefa with any of the persons mentioned” was based on information received from Uefa.

A further statement from Uefa after this story was first published said: “Uefa is dismayed by certain stories in the media suggesting that there might have been untoward or improper conduct in connection with a television rights contract concluded with a company based in Ecuador in 2006.

''For the record, and as repeatedly explained to the explained to the media, there was never any suggestion that anything improper took place. These explanations have been conveyed to the media in a clear, reasonable, and perfectly transparent way. It is therefore all the more regrettable that, despite the explanations given, some sections of the media have chosen to misrepresent matters and mislead the public by suggesting or implying otherwise.

Fifa has been fighting on a number of fronts in recent months.

Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian firm at the centre of the Panama Papers leak, resigned as the registered agents of Cross Trading in June 2015. In the first quarter of 2015, the Mossack Fonseca files show that the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Seychelles was investigating Cross Trading and asked Mossack Fonseca for more information about the company.